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Posts Tagged ‘Web Design’

Web Design and Multimedia

March 17th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

MULTIMEDIA FORMATS

Multimedia elements in web design (like sounds or videos) are stored in media files. The most common way to discover the media type is to look at the file extension. Picture formats are recognized by extension like .gif, .jpg as well as others.

Sound Formats: – Sound can be stored in many different formats

About Web Designing

March 16th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

Web designing relates to the designing of websites. With every
business house going for their World Wide Web address or
website the demand for web designing is assuming great
significance. In an effort to find a worthy place in the
hearts and minds of Internet users and to attract more and
more potential client-visitors, website owners are resorting to
professional designing of their sites. The services of
multimedia professionals and web designing experts are
increasingly being employed for the purpose.

Web designing encompasses a whole range of aspects. Apart from
the basic concept of web designing an in-depth knowledge of HTML,
DHTML, JavaScript, HTML Editor, Advanced Web Authorizing,
Advanced Web Image Animation and Walkthrough Virtual Reality- all
come within the ambit of web designing. Then again there are
involved the specialized concepts of digital image editing
(with concept of basic animation and image animation), 2D Animation
and scripting for Interactivity. Advance Web Authorizing and
Advanced Web Image Animation are also subjects of study of
specialized web designing. The object of all these is to bring
about attractive, user-friendly and advanced design of websites.

Professionally designed websites definitely create a greater
impact in the minds of the visitors. This goes a long way to
convert much of the targeted traffic to customers and thus
begetting profits for the website owner businessperson. The key
to success of many a popular website lies in its user-friendly,
elegant and appealing design. Thus, the subject of web designing
assumes immense importance and there is a lot of research going
on regarding its advancement.

Elements for Beautiful Website Design

March 15th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

You want your website to be functional, of course. Informative is important too. Above all, though, you want your website to be beautiful. Your goal is not simply to provide another bland piece of text that tries desperately to cloak an advertisement in the veneer of useful information. A basic shopping cart with all the items arrayed in orderly rows and columns like a tiny digital army of black text on white screen is not appealing to you and would not be to your visitors. When someone visits your home page, you want to immediately grab their attention, draw them into your message with a dazzling array of impressively designed graphics.

So what do you need to have ready to construct your beautiful website design? What do you have to provide your designer so that he, she, or they can create the most visually appealing layout possible? Well, as the old adage (or has it become a clich? by this point?) goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ignoring for the moment my inherent predisposition to launch into a semi comedic rant about the various virtues of D&D monsters and disintegration beams, the beholder in question is the person viewing your website. Or, in the words of advertisement, your target market.

Your graphic designer has all the skills required to construct elaborate and attractive graphics, colors and shapes placed in perfect balance to not only appeal to the eye but also draw its focus to the most important parts of your site. Your web designer knows the technical code that transforms a senseless array of ones and zeros into a fully functional, dynamic site, with all the graphics precisely positioned (despite, it would seem, the best efforts of competing browser developers). However, neither has any idea whatsoever about what your audience finds engaging, interesting, or beautiful.

What you need to have ready for your designers is a basic style for the site. What kind of images do you want? What colors will they be? What should the font style look like? Will there be any animation? I know what you are thinking.I do not know anything about making a website look good. Is not that what I am paying these guys for?

And the answer, of course, is yes. You are paying your graphic designer to take your colors, imagery, may be even a few sketches, and turn it into an appealing layout, logo, banner, and button system. You are paying your web designer to make that layout center on the screen, that button system light up when the mouse moves over it and press in when the user clicks. And you are paying them to tell you when your ideas are going to slow the site down, or hamper your SEO, or cost you more than the money you have budgeted.

 

 

website design tips

March 15th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

From the very beginning when html tables were invented to display numerical and mathematical data, web designers were hacking and distorting the code to create something that would be pleasing on the eye. Tables were never meant to contain images and display layouts, but the ingenuity of web designers produced some beautiful looking designs from these most basic of building materials.With the expert advise, the online companies are in a better position to salvage their reputation and business records. The experts would typically acquaint the business owners with the more common mistakes at the SEO end. An Internet marketing consultant Vancouver would advise its client against the incorporation of text and content in the form of graphic presentations. Some pdf rendering techniques could be outdated as well and not very much conducive to search engine optimization. The ultimate aim in all this is to ensure that the search engines are able to search, read, and then index the content.Website creation is essentially the process arranging information in a way that can be translated by Web browsing software, such as Internet Explorer, and presented to human viewers. To do this correctly youll need to gain a basic understanding of coding languages like HTML, CSS, and possibly PHP.While there are many languages and codes that can be used to build Web pages, HTML is the simplest, easiest to learn and most commonly used. Get a brief intro to HTML here.With technological advancement, digitalization and integration of various platforms a number of websites is increasing day by day. Just having a website would not do, how many aficionados are there of your website? How many clicks do you get on your website per day? Does your website rank well and generate leads? Effective website design is most important to attract your visitors so that they stick to your website and also find solutions on your website. I believe for effective website design basic knowledge of web design and web development is essential.Another, even more important element to look for is a website design company’s overriding philosophy regarding website design. What do I mean? I mean, are they more concerned with the design aspect of websites, or are they more concerned with making you a website that will ultimately increase your sales? Websites that are cute, clever and creative solely for the sake of being cute, clever and creative are completely useless for your purposes. Decorative typography can be utilized for creating texture and arrangement of focal point. When these decorative ones become as layout the barriers of graphics in visual interaction is break-free. In most instances decorative typography has become integral part of online written site content and gets first preference than graphic designs. The reason for it is graphics are not necessarily precise as desired and written content can be comprehended easily when compared to graphical designs. Pictorial presentation sometimes fail to convey the exact message to the target audience when compared with well written web content.

Web Design Combines Traditional Arts With Technical Skills

March 15th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

Web design is an art. There is no question about that. The question is: how many websites designed by real web designers are out there? With the amount of crap that purely invades the Internet and suffocates the users nowadays, there are serious reasons to doubt that web design is an art in its own right. So called web designers create terrible made for Adsense sites, or those awful personal pages that have nothing to say. But the Internet is a World and you should expect to find, as in the real world, tones of nonsense and digital rubbish. Such websites have no real value, are full of grammatical errors, respect no design techniques, blend colors, fonts and graphics irrationally, display flashy banners, annoying gifs and so on. Sites like these make people believe that it is ok to put up a website even if it is lousy. Anyone can start a website, but, can anyone design a website? Obviously not, since new websites appear online every day that are not good at all. Web design combines traditional arts with technical skills. A web designer is not just a web coder: he or she is an artist able to understand the value of image and other visual elements, and knows what impact these might have on the viewers. The web designer works with images and words to create the perfect web layout. To create unique websites, the kind of websites that really add value to the World Wide Web, skilled web designers use various tools. They might retouch pictures and graphics or create astonishing images using programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Jasic Paint, Photo Impact and so on. They might use 3D software or Flash to design dramatic layouts that will transport the visitors into another world. No matter what tools they employ, professional web designers create functional, astonishing web pages. Donât believe that web design, as an art, is not for business, corporate or informative websites. As a matter of fact they need it the most. While business and informational websites donât need to be artistic, they need to inspire. Corporate websites need clear designs, simple layouts so that any visitor could access the information fast and understand the purpose of the website. To create a website that sends the right message and develops brand awareness in an agreeable manner is an art. A good website can sell a service or products, but this donat mean that its appearance should fade. Compare a website to a car: you need it to transport your visitors through a space full of information. You don’t want them to be bored by what you have to offer. You want to entertain them, to mesmerize their minds, to make them come back. What it will be: a Hollywood like limousine or a second hand car? Yes, it is true: it is not the car that matters, but the ride. However, when you travel in an uncomfortable seat you might not enjoy the ride. And Dona anyone dream for a first-class ticket? After all this being said, you do not have to hire a web designer to build a great site in today is online world. Web design is an art, but with the advent of the new high power website builders, anyone can create a high quality website for a fraction of the cost of hiring a web designer. This is especially true of web building programs that are template driven. Online web building programs using this template driven a technology allow the user to make their website using professionally designed templates. This means the art of web design has already been done. The user simply chooses their template, adds their own content and photos, and in a matter of hours or days, a HIGH QUALITY website is created! Don’t be fooled. Not all website builders are the same. Make sure you use a website builder that includes ecommerce capabilities without an additional charge. One such program is High Power Sites. In conclusion: You can hire a skilled, talented web designer to create your business website but you will pay a high price as web designers are not cheap. Or you can use a top notch web building program for a fraction of the cost. You’ll need to pay the price for either one, but high quality websites don’t come cheap. If you are serious about doing business online, you should invest in your website. The future belongs to those that provide for quality on the World Wide Web.

What is the Graphic Design History?

March 1st, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

The compelling, if somewhat obscure, paintings in the caves of Lascaux around 14,000 BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC, are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design. The Book of Kells is a very beautiful and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Celtic monks in the ninth century AD. Johann Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg’s press and others of the era (the Incunabula). Only through the design of Aldus Manutius did the book begin to have a structure that would became the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the 20th century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time. Graphic design, after Gutenberg saw a gradual evolution rather than any significant change, in the late 19th century when, especially in the United Kingdom, an effort was made to create a firm division between the fine and the applied arts. From 1891 to 1896 William Morris’ Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its decadence and by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, historically important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris’ work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general. Piet Mondrian, born in 1872, is often called the father of graphic design. Although he was a fine artist (not a graphic designer) his use of grids inspired the basic structure of the modern advertising layout known also as the grid system, used commonly today by graphic designers. The term Graphic Design was first coined by U.S. book designer and type designer William Addison Dwiggins in the early 20th C. 20th century Famous SS Normandie poster by Adolphe Muron Cassandre.Modern Design of the early 20th century, much like the fine art of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface. Early Modern (not to be confused with the other modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries) typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century. The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916. Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Although the computer has altered production forever, the experimental approach to design they pioneered has become more relevant than ever. The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a “mass-produced” minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of postmodern architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand, who, from the late 1930′s until his death in 1996, took the principles of the Bauhaus and applied them to popular advertising and logo design, helping to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s. The reaction to the increasing severity of graphic design was slow but inexorable. The origins of post-modern typography can be traced back as far as the humanist movement of the 1950s. Notable among this group is Hermann Zapf who designed two typefaces that remain ubiquitous Palatino (1948) and Optima (1952). By blurring the line between serif and sans-serif typefaces and re-introducing organic lines into typography these designs did more to ratify modernism than they did to rebel. An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine. I Love New York campaign by Milton Glaser.Another notable designer of the latter 20th century is Milton Glaser who designed the unmistakable I Love NY ad campaign (1973), and a famous Bob Dylan poster (1968). Glaser took stylistic hints from popular culture from the 1960s and 70s. Advances in the early 20th century were largely inspired by technological advances in printing and also in photography. In the last decade of the same century, technology played a similar role, but this time it was the computer, and at first it was largely a step backwards. Zuzana Licko worked very early using computers for layout, in the days when computer memory was measured in kilobytes and typefaces were created using dots rather than lines. Together with her husband Rudy VanderLans they founded the pioneering Emigre magazine and the Emigre type foundry. They played with the extraordinary limitations of computers as something which, in itself, could provide creative freedom. Emigre magazine became the bible for digital design as the technology rapidly advanced to the point where the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. David Carson is, in a sense, the culmination of the movement against the restrictiveness of modern design—some of his designs for Raygun magazine are intentionally illegible, featuring typography designed to be visual rather than literary experiences. Soviet Constructivism Mainly in the 1920′s, in Soviet Russia, Soviet Constructivism applied ‘intellectual production’ in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitary purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus etc.

Web Design in a World of Change

January 25th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

When it comes to web design one of the things I really like to see for a more hands-free experience for visitors is self-updating code.
In some cases this information is free. In other instances you may have to pay something to use it or allow the information to be ad supported.
Let’s say for instance that you sell replica NASCAR vehicles. You might want the latest NASCAR news on your website. You can search for sources that provide the information either as scrolling text or in a side box.
There are sites that can make customizable content for your website for things like recipes, news, gardening as well as music and entertainment news. You can paste the code they supply into a webpage and watch as that information is updated on a regular basis.
This can be an important element for those who don’t want static information on their homepage and can utilize information relevant to the primary business website.
It is likely that is a visitor clicks on a link within the text of this information they will be taken away from your webpage, but if they are used to finding that information with you they will likely come back for more.
It is sometimes difficult for business owners to keep up with every aspect of their industry and this type of updating tool allows comprehensive and current information to flow without intervention from the site owner.
One site that seems to do a good job of listing lots of free content for websites is http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/. Categories include cartoons, education, entertainment, sports, news, maps, weather, tips and advice to name a few.
Most online sites look for relevant and changing content. The use of a free article directory can help you locate very specific content for your website, but for news and current events it can be difficult to broker individual agreements to cover the use of current content. That’s why finding self-updating source code can be important to your web design.
You can even segment small portions of your website to include things like a quote of the day, this day in history, unusual facts, daily questions and even games.
These elements can add some personality to your website as visitors become used to intriguing content that never seems to stay the same even when other content might.
You should know that not every html code you place on your website will match the look and feel of your website. There may be some adjustment you can make to help this. It is also possible that the code may interfere with your website design and you may need some help from a code expert to either fix the coding issue or find something else that may be more suitable.
Some individuals are also using RSS feeds to accomplish a similar goal. The point is that no matter the method you use to obtain the information the addition of content that remains in a state of flux can help in providing an improved user experience for your regular site visitor.

How To Get Free Web Design Advertising

January 19th, 2010 DigitalDreamCity No comments

If you are on a small budget there are a lot of free ways you can use on the Internet to advertise your business. Yes that is right! You don’t have to pay anything and they are the same solutions that companies pay thousands of dollars to do. So if you have some time, you can get ready to generate your own traffic for free!

Content

First of all you need to make sure your web design has the right content. Your content should be unique and interesting to your audience.  Give people something they are interested learning something that will bring them back for more. Your text needs the right keywords repeated in a certain density.  Only use about 1 keyword for every 100 words. This will help with search engines for your ranking. Do not repeat the same keywords too much. Search engine could see it as spam!

Blogging

Blogging is a great starting point for free. There are many of free services on the web that allow you to publish a blog. If you already have your  business web site then you can work the web design with the blog so it is a part of your site. When you write a blog be sure it is related to your business, then includes as much  inbound links possible to your website.

Press Releases

Press Releases are another way to promote for your business, writing press releases about upcoming events and other big happenings. This way you can get the word out and create hype about the business. Press releases can be sent to media outlets like newspapers, radio stations, news stations, and such.

Bookmarking

Bookmarking is a perfect way to bring more traffic to your site and get the word out about the fact that you exist. You can bookmark every single page on your website and this will ensure you get some traffic and will create a site rank.

Social Networking

The idea is that social networks like  Linkedin , Myspace and Facebook are similar to search engines, where the goal is to ensure that the most relevant and interesting content bubbles up to the top. On sites like Digg it means having enough votes from the community to move your news article to their front page, while on a site like MySpace, your measure of popularity is all about how many friends you can get. if you build relationships with other community members. Even though becoming an active member on these sites will help you get more traffic to you website , it is a great strategy for promoting your own material.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many techniques you can use to get free advertising for your web presence, There is no reason to leave out any opportunity, however if you don’t have the time, it is highly recommended to ask for an search engine optimization (SEO) expert that understands well your business model.

What We Can Learn About Web Design From Designer Swimwear

December 14th, 2009 DigitalDreamCity No comments

I’ll admit it…I’m not what anyone would call a fashionista. I don’t keep up with the latest designer trends, I don’t spend hundreds of dollars on my clothes, and I certainly don’t get complimented on my sartorial style. As a result, it came as somewhat of a surprise to me when I was contacted by Michelle, the owner of Jolidon Designer Swimwear, to work with her on her website on both the design and marketing aspects of it. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that there are a lot of similarities in the design and marketing of both swimwear and websites.

Most swimsuits use no more than four solid colors, which are selected to both complement and contrast with one another. The most common color scheme is black and white, which provides the maximum contrast ratio.

Implementing a high contrast ratio is not only a web design best practice, but it’s also one of the criteria required to meet Level 2 (AA) and Level 3 (AAA) web accessibility standards. Juicy Studio has developed a terrific tool called the Luminosity Color Contrast Ratio Analyzer, designed to help webmasters select sufficiently contrasting colors for their designs.

In order to understand both Jolidon’s competitors and the swimwear marketplace more clearly, I went into several department and swimwear stores and examined their product naming conventions. To my surprise, they were quite simplistic:

· Striped Monokini

· Black Bikini

· Red Tankini

When designing/developing product websites, we as webmasters should use similar naming conventions. They’re perfect from an SEO point of view because they concisely describe the products and incorporate generic keywords and phrases without being spammy, and they’re perfect from the user point of view because they concisely describe the products and incorporate keywords that users would commonly use to describe the products.

Monokinis, bikinis, tankinis, one-piece swimsuits, summer dresses, bandeaus, deep plunge necklines, thong style, moderate coverage area…there are a myriad of different designer swimwear styles presently available, and as time passes by more styles will make their way into the mainstream. One may also choose from solid colors, stripes, floral patterns, geometric patterns, Swarovski crystals, and non-standard patterns such as spider webs.

When designing websites, we should also be willing and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of styles as well. We have liquid layouts, fixed-width layouts, one-column layouts, two-column layouts, three-column layouts, four-column layouts, header menus, footer menus, left side menus, right side menus, dynamic two-or-three-tiered menus, solid backgrounds, patterned backgrounds, and many more design concepts at our disposal, and we should be prepared to use any or all of them as needed.

Designer swimwear is an ever-changing industry. As soon as the swimwear season is over, designers are hard at work coming up with next season’s trendy new swimsuits.

As web designers, we need to be aware of the constant evolution of both web design as a whole and of our competitors within our respective industries.

Studying the designer swimwear industry can teach us much about best practice when it pertains to web design, and we should make a conscious effort to implement as many of the lessons it teaches us as possible.

Effective Web Design Requires Precision Manchester Search Engine Marketing

December 14th, 2009 DigitalDreamCity No comments

Would you buy half a car? Half a trip to the Caribbean? Only half a dinner at your favorite restaurant? Of course you wouldn’t, for the simple reason that it doesn’t pay to do things by halves. So why would you only invest in web design Manchester when Manchester search engine marketing forms its significant other? Curious? Read on…

 

Not so long ago web design Manchester was a new and rather exclusive concept. Only some of the bigger companies could afford it, at a fee, of course. However thanks to the rapid (and we do mean rapid) advance of technology, everyone now has the opportunity to own a website. Some like it built for them by web design Manchester while others like to do it themselves. And best of all, every website now has the ability to function in accordance with the latest web trends such as Web 2.0 at the mere click of a button that enables a widget or a plugin.

 

Yes, life is indeed good when it comes to technology – things might be getting a little complex, but at the same time they, in most cases, simply require the click of a button. However that doesn’t mean its click here, click there and problem solved. Although web design Manchester has become easier, there’s a new giant on the loose that requires specialist attention. More importantly, it makes one wonder whether being able to design your own website is all what it’s cracked up to be. After all, you can have a brilliant-looking website, but if no one sees it, you’ll make no sales at all. Yes, we’re referring to Manchester search engine marketing.

 

“So why’s Manchester search engine marketing so important?”

 

Well, as said before, if no one sees your website, it has no reason to exist, other than to provide you with a pleasing visual aesthetic. Therefore the first benefit of Manchester search engine marketing is that it draws search engines – those conductors of the internet that direct people to websites – to your website, putting you on the map and ensuring that you get the traffic you need.

 

But there’s another reason for using Manchester search engine marketing: it’s the art of marketing; the art of identifying an audience that is unique to the product or service that you are selling to ensure that your sales are as high as possible.

 

So far, so good – right? Right. But there is one little hitch. You see, for your web site to be as effective as possible, it has to be designed according to the needs of your visitors. Now while you may have an idea of what those needs are, it often helps to get a professional bird’s-eye view. That’s where the web design Manchester and Manchester search engine marketing function as a package.

 

By employing a web design Manchester and Manchester search engine marketing company that shares the same umbrella, the worth of your home on the web increases. This is due to the fact that you’ll be guaranteed an increase in visitors and content directed specifically at them, which means your home on the web will not only be valuable, it will be lucrative.

 

So you see, doing things by half means not receiving all the benefits.